


tell me all the ways to love you

by daluyong



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Comfort Sex, F/M, Flashbacks, Friends With Benefits, Mid-Canon, Personal Growth, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-19 10:55:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22243297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daluyong/pseuds/daluyong
Summary: The old adage about silent waters running deep? That’s Marianne. Claude knows that better than anyone. He’s learned a little about how deep those waters go.
Relationships: Marianne von Edmund/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 13
Kudos: 63





	tell me all the ways to love you

That Marianne is their old crowd’s first wedding surprises everyone but Claude. But he supposes their surprise doesn’t surprise him either; he remembers the person she used to be, so sad and self-effacing. More shelled-up than a clam. Still, it’s not as if it was ever hard to sense, even in their academy days, that she was more.

The old adage about silent waters running deep? That’s Marianne. Claude knows that better than anyone. He’s learned a little about how deep those waters go.

“She always seemed to like talking to you,” says Hilda. They’re in the parlor at Margrave Edmund’s house with some of the others, sampling cakes. The war has been over three years, but remembering this feels as much like a miracle as the wedding they’ve all come together to attend in a week’s time—though of course without the bride-to-be around the conversation falls too easily to gossip. That they have the leisure now for gossip must be the most miraculous thing of all. “Tell us some secrets, Your Majesty. I know you have them.”

“I don’t think she’d take kindly to you talking about her in the past tense.” Claude knows what Hilda’s teasing tone means, the angle of her eyebrows. It’s the perfect opportunity to make a great show of passing Lysithea the sugar cubes, of stirring them into her tea himself. Among friends, there’s no point in acting like a king. “Besides, it’s not like she’s dying or anything—let her tell you her own secrets.”

\----

The first time Claude cottons on to Marianne’s hidden depths, so to speak, they’re newly returned to Garreg Mach. They have yet to clear the rubble, or to sweep away the dust, or to chart a course for whatever will come after. They’re both having trouble sleeping, though this is nothing new.

He’d been reading, a little while ago. Now he’s wandering the dormitory, as has been his habit since his student days, pacing the length of the second-floor hallway, and the first thing that catches his attention is the sound of something falling inside her room. Hitting the floor, but not shattering—a book, maybe, or a box. He’s about to knock at her door, one hand already raised, when he hears it. The indrawn breath, and then a strangled little noise that shapes itself partway around a word. He thinks the word might be _goddess._ It’s hard to be sure.

Then, he finds, he’s suddenly very awake, indeed. He steps away from the door.

It doesn’t surprise him—why would it surprise him? They’re not children, and moreover they’re at war, or about to be; far be it from him to deny anyone the chance to take their pleasure where they can, in whatever way they like. There’s just something endearing about the fact that it’s Marianne choosing to take hers alone, how he already knows she’s never let anybody know her easily. Cards close to chest. This is probably part of that.

If the thought follows him back to his room, maybe that’s to be expected. He’d caught her by the stables yesterday, to tell her a story he’d been carrying around in his head, these last five years, just for her. Something about a boy, and about breaking down walls. It wasn’t much, but he wonders if it had spoken to the part of her that even now seemed to be dragging her heart along the ground. And she’d given him a peculiar look then, right in the eyes, as though she wanted to stare right through him, just for a moment.

He doesn’t touch himself to the sound of Marianne’s breathing that night, though he can feel the want curled in a tight knot at the center of him, beginning in the belly and radiating down. It seems like it’d be impolite at least, a breach of respect at worst, and even he isn’t so much of a cad as all that, no matter what Hilda might say. But the thought does keep him awake, if only because he recognizes the shape of this wanting. Just the desire to know things, no less or more. Isn’t that what everyone wants?

\----

Which isn’t to say that he sets out to make her a conquest. They’re friends, and besides that the prospect of war is more than enough to sour him on the idea of conquering anything. The first night he knocks on her door, three days later, it’s not even with intentions, not really. Mostly, he finds he could use someone to talk to as he waits for the time to pass.

She already looks tired when she answers the door—long braid unraveling, dressing gown slipping off one shoulder. Claude finds he needs to bite his lip against the impulse to smile, or to apologize, possibly both at once; if he’s caught her in the middle of things, as he’s reasonably sure he has, she has all the right in the world to be out of sorts.

“Trouble sleeping?” he asks, though it’s less for the _what_ of the answer than for the _how._ Sometimes the _how_ makes all the difference.

Marianne frowns at him, like she’s trying to translate whatever she sees in his expression into a set of symbols she can read, then lowers her gaze to the floor. Claude settles for watching her fingertips tense against the door when she says, “I… have bad dreams sometimes.”

“Boy, do I know that one,” says Claude. “Want to talk about it?”

“In the doorway?”

“Absolutely. Doorways, you know, are excellent venues for conversation.” He turns back over his shoulder, regards the beams of moonlight streaming down into the hallway. The winter moon’s always had an icy quality about it, silver and shimmering. Looking at it makes him shiver, pull his collar higher around his neck. “Or we could go by the window? The moon’s lovely tonight, and since she’s not sleeping either, she could probably use the company.”

“No, it’s all right,” she says. And for all he knows she might be about to say _good night, Claude,_ and that will be that—but she doesn’t. Her eyes make a slow path, back and forth, up one end of the corridor and down the other. When they settle on his face, she seems to be connecting the pieces of something, seems to make several choices at once, all in a second. “Could you come inside for a while? If, if you want to.”

Claude decides he’ll take his time answering. He stands in her doorway, just shy of the threshold, and thinks about the cold. He thinks about the moon.

“Sure,” he says, at last. “Sure, all right.”

\----

It’s really just talking at first. Or maybe he should say it’s just talking until it isn’t—about ghosts, about nightmares, about the things that keep them awake. Then Marianne beckons him to sit on the edge of her bed so she can lean over to whisper something, and when he asks _need help?_ her only answer is _Claude,_ right by his ear. _Claude, I—_

 _No, really,_ he says, or thinks he says. _I mean, what are friends for, right?_

And it’s not until a little later that they’re lying on their sides, face to face and still talking in whispers. Marianne brings herself closer; Claude can feel the blankets underneath them shift as her body moves. Are you sure? If _you’re_ sure. But look, anytime you think you don’t like it, just tell me, and we’ll stop. If you just need someone to keep you warm, I'd be—

And it’s a little after that that he takes her hands, because that’s easy, because they’re a part of her she can pull away, easily, if she wants. Asks, what do you want? Show me.

So she does.

\----

The first secret he learns, not long after that first encounter: Marianne’s never kissed anyone before.

“Really? Never?” he asks her, one Monday, while they groom the horses together. It’s neither the time nor place for that kind of talk, but probably that’s to be expected of him—and to his credit, he keeps his voice low. Too low for even old Dorte, whose ears have a habit of flicking around every which way. “Why not?”

“What do you mean, why not?” There’s an archness about her manner behind closed doors, he’s discovered, that he never sees on her anywhere else. He likes knowing this, though he can’t say why; it’s like seeing a light go on, somewhere inside of her, where before there had been only dust and shadows. “Who would want to, with me?”

 _That won’t do,_ he doesn’t say, even if he could, even if she might just let him get away with it. _You could use some kissing. A lot of kissing, I think, by someone who knows how to do it well._

“Well, do you want to try?” It’s an odd thing to ask her across the back of her favorite horse, for sure, but he figures for this sort of thing there’s no prescribed time and place. He figures he could do worse than to go with it. “It’s all right if you don’t, by the way. We don’t have to do everything. I understand people usually want the kissing parts to be, like, with somebody special.”

Marianne’s quiet for a second, untangling a knot in Dorte’s mane with her comb. Her eyes go far away, and she mouths it a couple of times, _special._ Claude watches the curve her lips make around the word, and waits.

And then she smiles. And then she says, “I think you’re quite special, Claude. In your way.”

“In my way, huh? Well, I’ll be.” Another thing he doesn’t tell her is that it’s the first time she’s managed to startle him, and that turns into delight so quickly it makes him laugh, and he can’t help it. Doesn’t want to, even. “Oh, Marianne, I adore you.”

\----

The second, that night: Claude likes marking the shifts in the way she breathes. He kisses her in short distances, so he can listen to the rise and fall—from her mouth to the pulse point on her neck, from her neck to the plane of her breastbone. Breastbone to ribcage. Ribcage to hip.

It goes faster when he dips his head down, tongue running up the inside of her thigh. Sharpens the first few times he licks between her folds, becomes a word that sounds a little like his name, a little like _wait._ It sounds like panic. He’s already pulling back when Marianne reaches for his face, pushes it up gently.

“You all right?” Claude asks, without reproach, head tilted against her knee. Her palm is still on his cheek—almost like she’s forgotten she put it there, if the glazed-over look in her eyes is anything to go by. “Do I stop?”

“No, it’s just…” she starts to say, and bites her lip. He waits for her to gather the courage to meet his eye. “I don’t think I’ll last much longer, Claude.”

She sounds as though she’s worried he’ll find this disappointing, and he can’t understand why. He resists the impulse to ask, _is that all?_ Just swallows it right back down, because it sounds like a thing that she’d fret over, long after the fact, and she has more than enough of those without him putting his foot in his mouth.

“Oh, really?” Claude grins into her palm, kisses the inside of her wrist. Before she can answer, he’s bowed his head again. “Wonderful.”

“Claude—”

“Better take you all the way, then.”

_“Claude—”_

She says his name a few more times before it’s over—he doesn’t bother to count them, just knows he likes it best the last time, when it breaks in the middle, melting right down into this sharp, shapeless noise she needs to muffle against the back of her hand. It’s the first word she manages to say when he comes back up, after he’s wiped his mouth on the hem of his discarded shirt and gathered her curled-in body under his arm, stroking her hair. She speaks it with her face buried in his shoulder, shaking head to toe the way he used to see her do some days, on her knees in the cathedral.

To this day, he can’t imagine what she’d been praying for, then. What kind of forgiveness, because she’s never seemed the kind to ask for blessings.

“Easy,” he murmurs, breathless, just a wisp of a laugh in it and nothing more. With his fingertips he follows the curve of her spine, up and down, until the trembling stops. “There, now. I’ve got you.”

\----

Things escalate after that. Which is to say, Claude learns more secrets, files them away for remembering later.

The third thing: unbound, Marianne’s hair grows wild, curling and snarling every which way. It’s no wonder she needs to keep it in check with an army of pins. The first time he helps her remove them, Claude counts no less than twenty—and it’s too easy to lose them, too easy to drop them to the floor and never pick them up again when her hair comes down, braids unraveling, into his hands. It’s a living thing, Marianne’s hair, like some kind of strange, sweet-scented briar forest. He sure imagines he might get lost in it, when it falls all around him on the nights she comes into his room, slides into his lap, and rocks her hips in a slow circle. Then he’s not imagining anything at all; he’s just breathing her breath.

Incidentally, that’s the fourth thing: Marianne loves circles. She likes him to make them all over, with fingertips and tongue; she says _anywhere,_ she says _everywhere_. She touches him the same way, too, hands sliding up under his shirt as her mouth follows the curve of his ear, and moments like that he always thinks she’s definitely onto something, with these circles of hers.

(There’s one night—a night that it snows hard, in the middle of the Pegasus Moon, a night the wind in the parapets sounds too much like voices—she wants them somewhere in particular. That’s one night she has him hold her from behind, her fingers around his wrist and two of his inside of her, tracing circles. Her other hand mirrors his motion, palming him through his trousers, up and down, until his spine arcs and she drops her head back against his shoulder, gasping.)

What do you want? It’s always the same question. Tell me. Show me. And, always: all right? You all right, Marianne?

The fifth thing: he’s never seen her face when she comes. She never forgets herself enough to let him—always hides it in the crook of his neck, or behind her hand, even as the rest of her body seems to go someplace beyond her control, shuddering fit to break into pieces in his arms. That’s all right, though; it means she can’t see what he looks like, either, when he lets himself go for her, and that’s probably best for them both.

\----

The only time he ever mentions the arrangement to Hilda, he goes at it sideways. He says, “Hey, take care of Marianne, will you?”

They’re clearing rubble from the courtyard today. It’s a Wednesday, and there’s already a bit of spring in the wind, and the bells are ringing the evening call to prayer. Marianne will be in the cathedral about now, lighting candles.

“What?” Hilda asks, in the space between one toll and the next. “I wasn’t listening.”

“Nothing,” says Claude, smiling. Hilda likes to downplay how hard she listens, and he’s not about to say a thing twice. “I said I was getting hungry. Let’s finish this up quick.”

\----

Not that it happens every day, of course, and not that it’s just about the sex when it does. Marianne’s as elusive most days as she’s ever been, barring the weekly war council and whatever tasks the professor sets them to; she’s still at her prayers fairly often, and more often than that at work on the wounded. On the march, she spends so much time at her patients’ bedsides that she barely seems to eat or sleep.

Claude knows better than to look for her—and certainly not in the sense of someone attached or possessive—but he does worry. They’re friends, after all. And he’s glimpsed her enough on the battlefield with the white fire glowing between her palms, or in the infirmary, up to her elbows in someone else’s blood, that he’s begun to understand the things she must be haunted by. Things she’s never talked about, with him or anyone. At the very least, he can see why he’s never had a head for white magic; not everyone has the fortitude to believe in even half the things she must, to work so hard at keeping them all alive.

Some nights it’s less about the sex at all than about what happens after. They never sleep together—he’s always felt that would be too much, and she agrees—but they do lie together a long time, reading or talking or not talking, doing nothing but being side by side. Some nights Marianne brings the candle on the bedside table closer so she can look at the scars that cover Claude’s body, and he tells her the stories of the ones she hadn’t treated herself. These are only partly true, if at all. Mostly they’re fairytales of the kind you might tell children, where dragons can be defeated and death isn’t allowed to enter, because scars mean survival, don’t they?

They catch glimpses of the people they’ve been in other lives, now and then in the flickering candlelight. A boy with a dirty face and a silent, ghostly girl. How many times have they each died and come back to life? Claude can’t even imagine.

\----

“I think I need to go home for a while,” Marianne says, one morning in the spring. It’s a week, two weeks after Gronder Field. No one will say it, but they’re probably all only just beginning to feel human again.

Claude commits this utterance to memory for two reasons: the first, because she’s in the middle of pulling her dress back on when she says it, and of their own accord his eyes go to the lift of her shoulderblades beneath the fabric. The second, not once has he ever heard her refer to Margrave Edmund’s domain as “home”—not years ago, or now.

Claude takes his time answering. Instead, he rises from her bed, makes a beckoning gesture. _May I?_

The back of Marianne’s dress is held together by a score and then some of tiny buttons. He’d done his own share of fumbling with them in the beginning, and she’d hesitated—understandably—to show him her back, but the rhythm they fall into is almost thoughtless now. Almost natural, and peculiar for all that. He counts himself lucky that she can’t see the way he smiles at this thought, though she might easily catch it in the mirror on the far side of the room.

“They’re really something, these buttons of yours,” he says, lightly. One fingertip dances down the exposed stretch of her spine, the sort of feathering touch that carries no more intent than to tease, a little. “How do you survive without someone to undress you?”

 _“Claude.”_ She laughs a little then, hand to mouth. Small victories. Whether it’s at the words or the touch, Claude decides he’ll take this one.

“Or dress you! Or dress you.” This close, she must feel him soften. There’s no way she wouldn’t hear it, at the very least. “Seems like the sort of thing you can’t easily do without help.”

At last, a thread unravels. She says, “I have to… settle something.” And then, into the silence that follows, “The professor said they’d come with me.”

Another thing Claude commits to memory: her voice doesn’t shake. She’s steady all over, this time.

“Will you—” she starts to say, as on the same beat he says, “Of course.”

\----

The sword Marianne brings home from the dark forest is a cruel-looking thing with a curved blade, the crest stone in the hilt glowing like a living eye. Claude carries it to her room for her and sets it down against the wall next to the mirror, where it seems to lean forward, staring at them.

“That sure is something,” he says. Draws in a deep breath, and exhales through his lips, making a low whistling noise. “D’you remember how to use it?”

The idea seems to unsettle Marianne. She doesn’t love it; he certainly doesn’t blame her. “Well enough. I’m hoping I won’t ever have to.”

“That’s fair.” He’d been next to her when they found it, glowing among the bones of an ancient hero. Raphael on her other side, Leonie in front and Ignatz behind. There’d been a cut on Ignatz’s cheek that Marianne had closed with a spell, and the blood had dried in a smudge down the side of his face. Funny, thinks Claude, the things you remember about your great battles. He wonders if it’s the same for her. “I hope so too, for your sake.”

She doesn’t answer. Claude doesn’t mind; she’d smiled so bravely out in the hall, looked so settled into the miracle of being free. But here, where no one else is watching, he can see that courage flagging, buckling. He understands. It’s a feeling he knows well, how hollow a victory can be. Sometimes the struggle is all your body can bring itself to remember, for a long, long time.

He moves to stand closer—no more than a step, without touching. Just being side by side.

“Get some rest,” he says, in a voice so quiet it can’t be for anyone but her. “Be gentle with yourself.”

Marianne closes her eyes, and breathes her first free breath.

“I will,” she says. And again, “I will.”

\----

Once and only once, before they leave for Enbarr, Marianne tells him, “I want you to do something for me.” After months of being asked, _what do you want? What can I do for you?_ Claude knows he’ll wonder, later, about the tides that have shifted in her, in places he’ll never see. How far she’s probably come, to be back in her body now.

And when she pulls him atop her and takes him inside, he can see: her face. Her open eyes. She doesn’t take them off him the whole time, even as they begin to move together, even as she digs her nails in. That’s when Claude understands she’s not a fragile thing. At least, not anymore.

“I see,” he murmurs, afterward, when he’s spent and collapsed against her, and her hands are light on his back this time. Circles. “I see how it is. I see you, Marianne.”

\----

“Hey, c’mere,” Claude always says, after it happens. After whatever happens happens. “Let me hold you.” 

He’s never asked, all this time, why he’s the one she allows to hold her, of all people. Especially not when he’s in the middle of it, her head on his chest, her hair spilling all over them both like a blanket. So close there should be nothing left to reveal—and yet it still seems the asking would reveal something, so he doesn’t ask. He’s glad of it, though.

\----

It ends when the war does. That’s about what they both expect, though the truth is part of Claude has always wondered if she might outgrow him faster than that, is always pleasantly surprised when _this time_ proves not to be the last time one of them knocks on the other's door _._

Their last day in Garreg Mach, everyone’s preparing for a feast—or, well, as much of a feast as they can have, going all out with whatever’s left now that the fighting has drained them dry. He finds her sitting in the chapel, in the front pew near where the statue of the goddess used to be, in its place the small mountain of crumbled stone and cracked marble they had never gotten around to clearing away. She’s gazing at it now, steadily and a little sadly, like it’s the only thing she has left to pray to, and so she may as well.

“Hey, Marianne.” He calls to her from the aisle, from a distance, to let her know he’s coming. To give her time to compose herself, if she needs it. “You trying to skip out on chores too?”

“Oh, no,” she says, turning to look at him as he approaches. “It’s just… I’d only be in the way.”

She doesn’t say it the way she once did, like she really believed it; now it’s something that just sort of comes out of her, with no real intention or meaning. Not much more than an afterthought. He can be glad about that, at least, and about the fact that she doesn’t flinch when he moves to sit beside her, simply shifts a little to one side to open up the space.

“That makes two of us. Lorenz’s got the lute out, and he’s gonna put me through my paces for sure. I don’t know half the ballads he does, and here he is expecting me to harmonize.”

“I wish you’d be nicer to him,” says Marianne, with a laugh. Just a tiny one, her lips closed against it so as not to disturb the silence, but Claude’s had more than enough time now to catalogue the notes of Marianne’s laugh. This one’s as true as any of them, tiny though it may be. “He’s just upset he can’t accompany himself.”

“Milady, you wound me,” Claude says, in approximation of Lorenz. It’s not very good. In the end, it’s just to wring another laugh from her, greedy as that might be in a place where the goddess could still be listening. “How dare you speak the truth!”

Marianne gives it to him. Overhead, the bells are chiming too—the small silver ones, the ones she’s said more than once sound like the stars. Claude wonders if she’ll miss the bells of Garreg Mach. He wonders what else she’ll miss about this place that made them, in so many ways. For better or for worse, it’s the place where they became who they are.

“When we leave here…” she says, after what feels like a long time. She’s looking up at the windows, at the shafts of sunlight bending through the glass, and must not see him open his mouth, but maybe she can tell all the same that he’d been right about to offer her a copper for her thoughts. She’d be able to guess something like that, without having to look. “When we leave here, we won’t see it again for a long time.”

“No, I guess we won’t,” he agrees. “Anything you want to take with you to remember our old monastery by? If you need help nabbing one of those saint statues, speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“Stop,” she tells him, but she’s smiling. “Stop. I don’t need anything. I’ll just be happy to remember.”

Claude takes this thought, turns it over in the light. She’s right about that, of course. She doesn’t need anything, and neither does he—nothing that he hasn’t already filed away, at least, for his own private remembering. At the end of the day, he’s not the kind to kiss and tell.

It’s a thought that makes him want to burst out laughing himself, loud and long, until he can’t breathe right: how much he has to remember.

“Hey, Marianne,” he says, leaning over to nudge her shoulder with his own. Lightly—coming close, and then receding.

“Hmm?”

He figures there’s no harm in coming right out with it. He’s not him if he doesn’t love his questions, and the idea of getting answers has never scared him, no matter what they might be.

“Are we friends?”

\----

What ballads had Lorenz convinced them to sing that night, after he’d wrangled them both into the dining hall? Which one had Claude managed to sweet-talk Marianne into singing with them? The one about the wandering knight, probably. Or the one about the swallows, or the one about the roses. He can’t recall now— _I have a bad memory for things that don’t matter,_ he’d said, as Lorenz’s elbow dug into his side in vengeance—but Hilda’s already forgotten her question. Lorenz of the present has his lute out again, and she’s too busy swatting at him with a napkin to keep it down.

It had been almost fall, that last day, the leaves on the trees in the courtyard already going golden around the edges. There’d been a bit of a bite in the wind. But right now, it’s spring, and the air blowing through Margrave Edmund’s house smells like morning rain, and fresh lavender, and the kind of day where there must be something lovely beginning, somewhere.

“What are you all doing?” Marianne asks, appearing through the double doors with her riding cloak folded over her arm, stray flower petals caught in her hair. She’s glowing.

Claude’s never told her this, of course, but she’s always had a bit of a glow about her, a light that sits right under her skin. He’s never had trouble seeing it. Maybe no one ever has. That’s why they’re all here now, coming home to it.

“Hello, gorgeous.” He looks up at her, beaming. “We were just talking about you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Marianne's spouse-to-be remains unidentified for your imagining pleasure.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
